Apple Music Partners With Vice to Launch Six-Episode Documentary Series 'The Score'

Apple Music has partnered with cultural news network Vice to bring a new docu-series, "The Score," to the streaming music platform (via The Hollywood Reporter). The series will be six episodes, with each installment focusing on a unique, local music scene around the world.

The first episode, titled "Reservation Rap," [Direct Link] is split into two parts and focuses on an emerging Native American hip hop scene in Minnesota thanks to the Ojibwe tribe. The specifics were left hazy, but in the coming weeks the show will take viewers to music scenes in places like Brazil, Iceland and Vietnam.

Vice creative director Kelly Fulton says the series was inspired by Vice's 2007 documentary Heavy Metal in Baghdad, which explored the heavy metal subculture that thrived despite the Iraq War. "That doc sparked exactly what we wanted to do with this series, which is telling under reported and under represented stories around the world through the artists that are scoring those cultural climates," says Fulton.

Taking advantage of the platform, The Score will launch a themed playlist alongside each weekly episode, with a focus on the specific artists and songs seen in the show. Reservation Rap can be streamed today, with the next five episodes launching over the coming weeks.

Apple has been expanding its streaming video content available on Apple Music over the past few months, starting off with an exclusive behind-the-scenes film centering around Taylor Swift's 1989 World Tour, which launched in December. In February, news broke that the company plans to take the creative side of its music streaming service a step further, with original TV series Vital Signs that will be a "dark, semi-autobiographical drama" starring Dr. Dre.

Top Rated Comments

Considering the dad-joke vibe that the exec team revels in at keynotes, I'm impressed that they're giving the Apple Music team the creative control to try things like this. Not every company's leadership has the self-awareness to do that. They've learned a lot since that time that they forced everyone to download that U2 album.

What's not classy about Beats and Vice? Or learning about music and culture in underrepresented communities? Or a company that uses people of color in their marketing, their product focus and their executive team?

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